As always on CC, you all have given me a lot to think about and made many good points.
First off, I realize that the attitude of my posts was perhaps a little harsh towards colleges, and I’m not trying to paint them as evildoers – most schools are doing their best to address many competing needs in terms of admissions, and obviously there’s no solution that’s perfect for everybody.
However, I think it’s naive to take colleges at face value when they portray their admissions practices as meritocratic, holistic utopias. I don’t necessarily believe that colleges, even need-blind ones, aren’t trying to limit how much financial aid they give out, and full-pay students are as much a part of that equation as anyone. Even with the recent scandals, colleges still take a special look at uber-wealthy students. That’s not by accident. On the other hand, I haven’t found good data on whether the percentage of wealthy students at elite schools has gone up or down – so like I said, I’m just speculating.
And yes, there are exceptions, but I think colleges know the rough income bracket of 99% of applicants (the poor kid from the Hamptons probably wrote his essay about it). After all, they can’t pledge to admit more lower-income students if they have no clue which students are low-income.
I didn’t realize fundraising was such a big part of college financial aid budgets, so that does explain some things. Furthermore, colleges might be accepting plenty of students in all income ranges, but that doesn’t mean they’ll go. Some might feel they can’t afford it, and I’d argue more middle-class students fall into that category (even including upper-middle class students at the lower end of full pay), so it may be a chicken-and-egg issue.